The effects of repetition

In life I believe we use repetition for a couple of different reasons, to dull the emotions linked to traumatic events or remember those emotions and develop new emotions. Kiowa repeats the story of Ted Lavender’s death over and over in order to dull the emotions of the incident. A lot of times when a person continuously talks about a situation or obsesses about traumatic experience I believe it is to attempt to lessen the intense emotions associated with that event. It is as if the more you repeat the event the less shocking it should be or more familiar it becomes. Familiarity in anything tends to lead to feelings of comfort or even confidence, which Kiowa seemed to be looking for. Although Kiowa was jealous of the emotions of Jimmy Cross for having the “Christian” feelings for Ted’s death, Kiowa still had intense feelings. In an attempt to hide the emotions he did feel and adopt those feelings that Jimmy had he continued to tell the story numerous times. He was hoping that if he relived the event many times that the emotions he craved or felt were more appropriate would be etched into his subconscious instead of the current shock he had.